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In Europe, visionaries make way for pragmatists - by Matthew Schofield
In hopes of encouraging parents to have bigger families, Merkel's junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, proposed setting up daycare for children one year or older, a model popular in Scandinavia. And Merkel agreed, throwing out a basic tenet of her own party's ideology about childrearing at home. The result: a massive construction program to permit universal daycare within six years.
It's the latest example of Europe's new pragmatism, and as of this past week, Merkel - who became chancellor 18 months ago - finds herself in good company. With Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister in Britain and Nicolas Sarkozy following Jacques Chirac as president of France, a different generation is taking over."It's not only in Rome, but in Paris, in London, in Berlin. We've got too much that needs to be done to fight about ideologies," said Italian Sen. Furio Colombo, a Left Democrat. "The timing is not coincidental. It is a new era. Some generations produce Raphael, who creates works we all notice," he said. "Other generations must finish painting the rest of the church. Both are necessary."
As for George Bush, perhaps the most unpopular American leader in Europe in modern times, no one is paying him much attention. "That's not irony, that's election cycle," said Jan Friedrich Kallmorgen, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations with the German Council on Foreign Relations. "Bush is no longer standing. He's closer to dead duck than lame duck."
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